Anuradha Sridharan

As I stumbled upon this hashtag  #25yearsofYuvanism  this evening, many of his beautiful songs flashed in my mind one after another. Being an 80s kid, Illayaraja meant early childhood, AR Rahman meant growing up years (and beyond too!), Harris Jayaraj meant college days, Yuvan meant early work years. I remember in the 2000s there was a brief time frame when there were not many ARR Tamil albums being released. Harris and Yuvan filled the gap with amazing albums. After returning from work, listening to Yuvan's songs on Sun Music used to be my choice of relaxation in the evenings. My first iPod had a playlist of Yuvan songs that were so special to me. I'm a bigger fan of his voice than his music composition. His soulful voice stirs up a melancholy of emotions. As I was listing down my top 10 favorite songs, it is no surprise that majority of them are sung by Yuvan himself. 1) Pogadhey from Deepavali 2) En kaadhal solla neramillai from Paiya 3) Iragai poley alaigirine from Na...

 This morning, my phone was restarting continuously and I couldn't figure out the exact issue. So I ended up doing the "factory reset", hoping that this would resolve the problem. As I reset my phone, I wondered how it would be if humans also had a factory reset option. As I spoke this out loud, my daughter responded, "then you would forget everything you have learned, mommy. You will then go back to kindergarten and learn ABCs all over again". What I inferred by factory reset wasn't exactly our knowledge. What if our childhood conditioning, our beliefs, biases, judgments, habits, and patterns can be wiped off and we could get a clean slate whenever required, WITHOUT any impact on the basic knowledge that we had gained to function in this world? What if a clean slate is possible WITHOUT giving up on our physical body and the present life? Why is it that ONLY death and rebirth can enable this total reset option? If "Restart" is equivalent to sleep t...

  Ever since the pandemic started in Mar 2020, life has been throwing challenges at me one after another. As I come out of one challenge, the next challenge arrives in a month, that's more harder, more intense and more complex. My innate problem solving nature and my need for control felt so pointless. Surrender to the situation and hope that things will resolve on its own seem to be the right strategy. I keep repeating Thalaivar's dialogue to reassure myself - "nallavangala Aandavan sodhipaan aana kai vida maattaan! Kettavangalukku neraiya kodupaan aanakadaisila kai vittuduvaan!" Every challenge also brings in a lot of questions about life, birth, death, karma, purpose, locus of control etc. I keep looking for answers in spirituality, astrology and philosophy. Many books have helped me gain some perspectives in these 2 years - Karma by Sadhguru , The Subtle Art of not giving a f*ck by Mark Manson , Search inside yourself by Chade-Meng Tan to name a few....

 People come into our lives for a reason. Every one of them - be it our close family members or a random stranger or an author whose words reach us at the right moment. In the past few days, as I connect the dots on why she came into my life, the reasons are evident in front of my eyes. My MIL, whom I call as Amma left this planet a couple of weeks back because of Covid infection. This all happened too soon and too sudden that we are yet to recover from the shock. Amma was the first person, with whom I stood next to and observed how she cooked. She is my first guru when I was taking baby steps in cooking in 2006. She was a meticulous person, jotting down lists for everything and labeling every single box/container in her kitchen pantry. I have never seen anyone as patient as her. We have had our share of difference of opinions, when it comes to food, health, lifestyle and parenting. Her clear preference towards packaged foods is what pushed me to understand about food and health in...